As he stood, some dimly-seen movement caught his eye, and, looking over his shoulder, he saw the door through which he himself had come in slowly open, and a man put in his head, and then enter silently, and shut the door. This figure, faintly seen in the imperfect light, resembled but one man of all his acquaintance, and he the last man in the world, as he thought, who would have courted a meeting. Carmel stood for a moment startled and chilled by his presence.
"I say, Carmel, don't you know me?" said a very peculiar voice. "I saw you come in, and intended to knock; but you left your door open."
By this time he had reached the window, and stood beside Mr. Carmel, with the moonlight revealing his features sharply enough. That pale light fell upon the remarkable face of Mr. Marston.
"I'm not a ghost, though I've been pretty near it two or three times. I see what you're thinking—death may have taken better men? I might have been very well spared? and having escaped it, I should have laid the lesson to heart? Well, so I have. I was very nearly killed at the great battle of Fuentas. I fought for the Queen of Spain, and be hanged to her! She owes me fifteen pounds ten and elevenpence, British currency, to this day. It only shows my luck. In that general action there were only four living beings hit so as to draw blood—myself, a venerable orange-woman, a priest's mule, and our surgeon-in-chief, whose thumb and razor were broken off by a spent ball, as he was shaving a grenadier, under an umbrella, while the battle was raging. You see the Spaniard is a discreet warrior, and we very seldom got near enough to hurt each other. I was hit by some blundering beast. He must have shut his eyes, like Gil Blas, for there was not a man in either army who could ever hit anything he aimed at. No matter, he very nearly killed me; half an inch higher, and I must have made up my mind to see you, dear Carmel, no more, and to shut my eyes on this sweet, jesuitical world. It was the first ugly wound of the campaign, and the enemy lived for a long time on the reputation of it. But the truth is, I have suffered a great deal in sickness, wounds, and fifty other ways. I have been as miserable a devil as any righteous man could wish me to be; and I am changed; upon my honour, I'm as different a man from what I was as you are from me. But I can't half see you; do light your candles, I entreat."
"Not while you are here," said Carmel.
"Why, what are you afraid of?" said Marston. "You haven't, I hope, got a little French milliner behind your screen, like Joseph Surface, who, I think, would have made a very pretty Jesuit. Why should you object to light?"
"Your ribaldry is out of place here," said Carmel, who knew very well that Marston had not come to talk nonsense, and recount his adventures in Spain; and that his business, whatever it may be, was likely to be odious. "What right have you to enter my room? What right to speak to me anywhere?"
"Come, Carmel, don't be unreasonable; you know very well I can be of use to you."
"You can be of none," answered Carmel, a little startled; "and if you could, I would not have you. Leave my room, sir."
"You can exorcise some evil spirits, but not me, till I've said my say," answered Marston, with a smile that looked grim and cynical in the moonlight. "I say I can be of use to you."